Linda is the proprietor of a bar in Cork. In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers – most of whom are unemployed alcoholics – to drink now but pay later.

She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger [thereby granting the customers loans].

Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers flood into Linda’s bar.

Taking advantage of her customers’ freedom from immediate payment constraints, Linda increases her prices for wine and beer, the most-consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases Linda’s borrowing limit.

He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert bankers transform these customer assets into DRINKBONDS, ALKBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then traded on markets worldwide.

No one really understands what these abbreviations mean and how the securities are guaranteed. Nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top-selling items.

One day, although the prices are still climbing, a risk manager (subsequently of course fired due to his negativity) of the bank decides that slowly the time has come to demand payment of the debts incurred by the drinkers at Linda’s bar. However they cannot pay back the debts.

Linda cannot fulfill her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy.

DRINKBOND and ALKBOND drop in price by 95 %. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by 80%.

The suppliers of Linda’s bar, having granted her generous payment due dates and having invested in the securities are faced with a new situation. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor.

The bank is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock consultations by leaders from the governing political parties (and vested interests).

The funds required for this purpose are obtained by a tax levied on the non-drinkers.

Things to consider before purchasing a Laptop

Author: Dean Ingraham of The PC Exchange

When it comes to buying a new laptop, it is not always easy to make the right choice. Even the sales associates at Walmart or Best Buy are little to no help when it comes to making an educated decision. It could be argued that it would be in our best interest not to educate our customers or the general public on the major laptop manufactures and their quality of products. However, we believe that by doing so, you will not only purchase a better product, (that will require little to no repairs) but that when the time comes, you will be more than willing to upgrade or repair that same laptop, knowing that it is a worth while investment.

The first two pages of this article will give you some insight into what make laptops good or bad. The second page describes some of the most common issues with laptops in general while the preseeding pages will describe each laptop brand specifically. If you are only interested in learning the pros and cons of each brand, skip to page 3, but I highly suggested that read the first two pages so that you can make a more educated decision when buying a brand new laptop.

Everything is an Investment

I heard a pretty shocking statement from a lady who came into our shop with an eMachine desktop, she said:

I love eMachines

I of course asked why

Because they are so cheap and disposable. As soon as one breaks, I go to Walmart and buy another

Unfortunately, she is not the only one with this mind set. Consider this. Everything in life is an investment, now I could write a whole article along on this concept, but just to prove my point on this article, I am going to give you a few few figures.

On average a low-end Acer laptop costs around $300 minus tax. Most of these Acers do not last more than a year or two and sometimes even less. Because this is the case, it is usually not worth repairing and even doing a data recovery seems daunting after you realize how much money you just wasted. So with the repairs being more than what the laptop is worth, you go out and buy another one, lets say at the rate of every 2 years. At this rate you are spending $900 or more every 6 years for a very poor quality laptop.

Now lets say you decide to invest some money on a higher quality laptop such as an Asus. Typically you will spend about $500 – $600 on an Asus laptop, which is a great price for the quality and great specs that you are receiving. In most cases this laptop will last you at least 4 years if not much longer with very few issues, as long as you take care of it. This means, that if that same laptop costs you $600 and in 4 years the hard drive needs to be replaced (most common repair for any laptops, usually due to the user) you will have only spent $800 in that same time period. So not only are you spending less money per year, but you are only buying one laptop in that same period of time, which will have much better specs (meaning that it will run much faster and smoother) with very little issues. In fact, at $300 per laptop, you will be lucky if the 2nd or 3rd one you buy meets or exceeds the specs of the 1 Asus laptop you could have bought 6 years ago.

Standards

There are different standards that manufactures hold to such as FCC, ISO, UL as well as others, noted by their seal of approval that help to keep manufactures within a certain bounds of performance, safety, and quality. These standards however, are very minimal and the government has helped manufactures to slacken these standards. In any case, as you can imagine, each manufacture has their own set of standards in which they follow. For instance, a laptop may have a certain brand name on the outside of the case, but what many do not realize is that the components on the inside are actually built by a series of manufactures like Asus, Biostar, Diamond, Foxconn, Realtek, and many others. Just as each laptop brand has their own standard of quality, so does each hardware manufacture. Simply put, a manufactured PC is nothing more than a computer made up of components made by the lowest bidder. Though just about every manufacture buys components from the lowest bidder, it is not without a certain degree of standards. For instance, Acers may have a quality standard that allows them to go as low as $20 (Imaginative figure) a board per unit where as others may spend closer to $50 per board per unit. Again, you get what you pay for. In other words, manufactures may go for the lowest bidders, but many will only go so low while others will go as low as possible.